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Hogwarts takes the Hill

By Kevin Welsh '15

Forget chemistry and history—last weekend Hamilton was home to potions and divination, and for two brief nights turned itself into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. On the evenings of  Friday Oct. 24 and Saturday Oct. 25 evening, over 60 students gathered in Benedict Hall to put on improvised skits for local residents and Hamilton students, all while acting out characters from the Harry Potter series. This was the fourteenth year of the show, and despite the book series end seven years ago it drew just as many participants as ever before.

Hogwarts was originally the brainchild of a group of students at Hamilton in 2000 who wanted to put on a Halloween themed event that was more than just scaring people or creeping them out. They came up with a one room, one act sketch in a common room, and from those meager beginnings comes a full weekend of madness of magic.

It is hard to explain Hogwarts if you have never been, but it is an essentially a continuous production about life at Hogwarts, all told through different classrooms scenes. Upon arrival, all the visitors are sorted into houses, and those become the groups you follow through Hogwarts. As the show goes on, you and your group will visit each classroom, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Divination, and Quidditch, watching different scenes played out by the book’s characters and see all the different parts of life at the school. There is no joint narrative amongst all the classrooms, and all the scenes are supposed to be unique experiences, so every person who goes through the performance feels like they have just sat through a day in the life at Hogwarts, rather than just watching a story that goes on outside of them.

Hogwarts is not all spells and wizards though, it is also philanthropic. Each year Hogwarts puts on their show at accepts donations to the Kirkland Public Library from visitors. There’s no ticket price at the door, so visitors are free to pay whatever they want, but this model has proven successful yet again. After thirteen shows over two nights the show made around one thousand dollars. It is difficult to get an accurate headcount of how many people actually come and see the show each year, but each performance of the weekend had guests. Each night the final shows were particularly packed with mobs of students, all of whom were enthusiastic participants.

The show is actually divided into two versions to cater to the different groups that arrive for each showing. During the earlier shows each night, the show is family-friendly, catering as possible. Visitors are called up to perform curses, mix potions, and even ride brooms. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the so-called clean skits comes when a child cureses the cast. No matter the spell, the cast is expected to act it out, even if that means collapsing on the floor dead.

As the night goes on, and the visitors age, the nature of the sketches can change dramatically. Jokes go from mild to mature in moments, and sex, drinking and Mean Girls become some of the primary topics of discussions in Hogwarts classrooms. Co-chair Ben Fields ’15 (Draco Malfoy) explains saying, “We change the skits dramatically even during the performances. If a joke doesn’t play, we take it out, and if we need to use physical comedy we will. Even if that means centering an entire room on wizard kama sutra.”

The idea of Hogwarts at Hamilton is whimsical and best and embarrassing at worst, but more than 50 cast members prove that there is certainly something either endearing or exciting about revisiting childhood favorites in such a peculiar way.

Hannah Fine ’15 (Hermione Granger) said that she loves Hogwarts at Hamilton because, “you get to meet the coolest most interesting people at the Hogwarts at Hamilton weekend, and the opportunity to interact with the kids from Clinton is always fun.” And for Fine, this story in particular will always be worth revisiting, “I grew up on those books, those books symbolize my childhood and so much of my experience growing up and getting to geek out about that with people who feel the same way is really great.”

Despite the worries each year that Harry Potter will suddenly stop being relevant to both audiences and students, this year’s Hogwarts was full of first-years, both at Hogwarts and Hamilton.

Fields was very impressed with the cast, saying, “This was one of the best years we’ve had in my four years.”

Although there were concerns about the event coming together, Fields was ecstatic with final result. “We really came together as a group and managed to put it all together. I would guess that we had over 200 members of the community come through over the course of the weekend, and probably a solid 100 students.”

From all the excited young fans wandering into scenes from their favorite books to older fans trying to bring their favorite books to life, Hogwarts at Hamilton is an exciting, funny, and timeless experience for everyone involved. While the wands have been traded in for iPhones again, and Benedict Hall is no longer transfigurated into Hogwarts, the magic will live on another year. And as long as someone still remembers that it is ‘levi-oh-sa, not levi-oh-sa’ Hogwarts’s charm will live on at Hamilton.

Though the skits may be over, stay tuned for future events from the club.

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